Bad Boundaries & Good Relationships: Thomas King & Natasha Donovan

Getting Lit with Linda - The Canadian Literature Podcast

In this episode, Linda reflects on why we say boundaries are "bad" and how "good relationships" stand in contrast. Using Thomas King (author of The Inconvenient Indian, Medicine River, Green Grass, Running Water) and Natasha Donovan's graphic novel, Borders (published by Little Brown, 6.55), Linda explores "bad boundaries" -- and bad borders -- in relation to the Blackfoot nation. She also refers to Daniel Rück’s The Laws and the Land (4.00) and Benjamin Hoy’s A Line of Blood and Dirt (5.55) to explain her thinking around boundaries and borders. Some of her musings encompass the following:

• What are bad boundaries? (2.43; 5.05; 10.40)
• The Canadian-American Border; Blackfoot territory (8.30; 9.00; 12.19; 14.18; 15.00)
• Mapping and cartography as expressions of power (8.40)
• National imagined identities (9.00)
• Blackfoot culture (9.58)
• Relationships (between the mother-daughter, mother-narrator in the story, 11.00; 15.25; 16.35)
• Stories and their importance (15.40)

The Takeaway is about Joshua Whitehead's Full Metal Indigiqueer published by Talon Press (17.00), with reference to Making Love to the Land by Penguin Random House. She makes reference to the difference between Transgender and Two Spirit, the former referreing to someone whose gender identity differs from the sex assigned at birth, the latter to an Indigenous person who identifies as possessing both a masculine and a feminine spirit.

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